How Should a Grown-Up Play With a Child?

Nearly every piece of parenting advice says to play with your child. Almost none of it says how. One of the clearest answers comes from a clinic.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, usually shortened to PCIT, was developed by psychologist Sheila Eyberg for children aged two to seven. Its first phase, called Child-Directed Interaction, teaches parents to follow their child's lead in play using a small, specific set of skills. A therapist coaches the parent live, through an earpiece, often from behind a one-way mirror. The therapy was built for families dealing with serious behavior problems, but the core of the first phase is simple enough to borrow for an ordinary afternoon on the floor. There is an honest caveat about that, and it comes at the end.

Five things to do

PCIT teaches them under the name PRIDE.

• Praise, specifically. "You stacked those so carefully" instead of "good job." Naming the exact thing a child did tells them what got noticed.
• Reflect. Repeat what the child says, and add a little. The child says "big truck." You say "a big truck, going up the ramp." It shows you are listening and gives them more words without correcting them.
• Imitate. Do what they are doing with your own blocks or crayons. Copying a child's idea tells them the idea was worth copying.
• Describe. Narrate their play out loud, like a sportscaster. "You are putting the blue one on top." It keeps your attention on them and gives them language for what they are doing.
• Enjoy. Warmth in your voice and real interest on your face. Some versions of the program call this one enthusiasm.

Three things to hold back

During this kind of play, PCIT asks parents to avoid commands, questions and criticism. The first and last are obvious. The middle one surprises people.

"What color is that?" and "What are you building?" feel friendly. To a child they are quizzes. Each one takes the lead back, puts the grown-up's agenda in charge and turns play into a test. So does "put that one over here," however gently it is said.

The fix is usually to turn the question into a description. "What are you making?" becomes "you are making something with a lot of wheels." The child still hears that you care. They just do not have to answer you.

Follow the child. Hold the questions.

Five minutes, protected

PCIT asks parents to practice these skills at home for five minutes every day, a window often called special time. Five minutes sounds trivial. In practice, five minutes with no phone, no instructions and no questions is harder than it looks, which is part of why the time is kept short.

Let the child pick what to play with. Building toys, crayons and pretend play sets suit the window well. Board games and ball games suit it less, because a game with fixed rules needs somebody to enforce them, and that somebody becomes the grown-up giving commands.

These five minutes do very little toward the daily activity guidelines, and they are not meant to. Their job is different: a child who gets five minutes of a grown-up's full, uncritical attention tends to want that grown-up in the game for the rest of the day.

Where this approach falls short

Borrowing the skills is not the therapy. The research behind PCIT comes from coached sessions with trained therapists, who track progress against set standards before a family moves on. Reading five words off a page does not recreate that. If a child's behavior is the real worry, the right step is to ask their pediatrician about a referral to a certified PCIT therapist, not to try harder at home. The piece on when letting kids play is not enough covers that kind of situation.

It is a window, not a way of parenting all day. Following the child's lead stops at the stove, the street and one child hurting another. PCIT itself agrees: its second phase, Parent-Directed Interaction, teaches parents to give clear, direct instructions. Special time works because it is set apart from the rest of the day, not because it replaces it.

It will feel strange at first. Narrating a child's play out loud can feel like talking to yourself, and dropping questions feels unnatural. Expect clumsy first attempts.

It was built for young children. The program targets ages two to seven. A ten year old will notice the sportscaster voice. For older kids, the parts that travel are letting them choose the activity and holding back the commands and the criticism.

The short answer

Get down to their level, let them choose, describe what they do, copy them, praise the specific thing, and save the questions and instructions for later. Five protected minutes a day is enough to start. The simple toys make it easier, and the grown-up makes it work. That is the heart of Let's Get Kids Playing Again.

This is not medical advice. A pediatrician is the person to ask about your own child.